549 Days
by TheGrammarNeurotic
Summary: A brief meeting between Alex Krycek and his employer.


21 June, 2011

Five hundred and forty-nine days remaining.

Plagued by a growing sense of unease, Alex Krycek paced the office. It was a nice office, one could argue, with its expensive furnishings appointed in what might only be defined as the absolute best of taste. It was a far cry from a lavish country estate resplendent with the laughter of grandchildren, the ultimate form of bravado: faith in a future that may not come. That would never suit his employer.

Neither did tardiness, and so, as the clock ticked toward his appointment with no sign of the man, Alex paced.

The world had undergone drastic change in the last decade, and he could only begin to imagine how much of it might be due to this one man, this Mycroft Holmes. Certainly Alex had only glimpsed the narrowest corner of the man's vast web of influence. That was enough.

Mycroft Holmes had appeared on the global stage in the late nineties, a fledgling British spy who should have been in over his head. It was rumored that he had handled his first encounter without blinking, flinching, or even breaking a sweat. In mere days he had discerned and understood everything that had taken Fox Mulder years of hard work to discover. If Mycroft detested anything, it was hard work.

For a year, all had proceeded normally. Well, as normally as anything ever went in the shit-hits-the-fan world where Alex lived. For a year, the young British spy was nearly forgotten.

Exactly as Mycroft had wanted.

Before his stunning debut into the world of Shadow Politics, Mycroft had displayed uncanny foresight in abducting Alex Krycek and replacing him with a convincing double. A month later, he had swept in like a conquering hero, gathered the remaining conspirators together, and exposed all of their duplicitous schemes to each other.

After that, he had set about the business of meticulously and ruthlessly pruning away all of the major players who had outlived their usefulness.

Alex felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, alerting him of a message, but it reminded him of another of Mycroft's tools. After what what Alex mentally termed the Great Purge, Mycroft Holmes had turned his attention to a fantastic resource that had previously been ignored by most of those in the know.

The Internet.

Social networking sites began to emerge. You're welcome for that. A few nudges and suggestions to the right people, and suddenly it becomes quite acceptable for everyone to post all manner of random bullshit on the 'net. The advantage was never obvious to anyone with a lesser intellect than that which Mycroft wielded. In what could only be termed a metaphorically shrinking planet, secrets are harder to keep. It's not easy to kidnap research subjects when some idiot with a smartphone is yelling "This is SO going on YouTube!"

The door swung open, interrupting Alex's reverie. Mycroft Holmes strode toward his desk, his assistant in tow. She was going by Anthea these days, Alex remembered.

"_Odobryat_," Mycroft said with a slight nod. In the years since their first meeting, he had traded his characteristic curls for a close-cropped hairstyle of a more nondescript nature, but he never stopped greeting Alex in Russian. "You wouldn't believe the traffic on the A303 today."

Alex glanced toward Anthea, who was picking apart a wreath of daisies in between sending texts. They had been at Stonehenge? What for?

"You're a busy man, so I won't keep you." Mycroft dropped a flash drive into Alex's pocket. Instructions.

In the last decade, Alex had worked as an assassin for Mycroft, his hand in the shadows, his own personal Golem, and he had never regretted a moment of it. Unlike the old bastards who had come before, Mycroft Holmes never shrank from doing his own killing. When for some reason he could not, he sent Alex. Or Anthea, which was a thought which did not bear repeating. He wouldn't know the reason for the job, though.

It's not that Mycroft kept Alex in the dark about things out of some need-to-know power trip. No, he was nothing like his conspiracy-building predecessors. He was just a let-not-your-left-hand-know-what-your-right-hand-is-doing type, which Alex supposed may be for the best.

Frankly, the chessmen didn't need to know the strategy of the chessmaster.

The men responsible for the layers of conspiracy had played their petty games. They had struggled against one another, against outsiders, against all of the aliens. They had thought to save themselves, or maybe even the world. Now Mycroft dominated the gameboard they had built.

He didn't do it to save himself. He didn't do it to save anyone else, for that matter. He moved his chess pieces around the global stage, setting them in the perfect positions and letting them act as he knew they would, for only one reason.

He did it because he enjoyed the game. And for that reason, Alex Krycek believed he might succeed.


End file.
